Kallas gave Georgia three sentences at the press conference, as Interpressnews rendered them in English. Democratic backsliding is worsening, more and more opposition parties face the prospect of being banned and the foreign agents law is suffocating civil society, she said. “The Georgian people want a European future, but the Georgian Dream is systematically depriving them of it,” she said.
Then she judged the policy itself: the current approach neither creates sufficient pressure for change nor allows the EU to fully pursue its European strategic interests, and the ministers will return to the issue in January. She did not say what would replace it. The Council’s written outcome says the same in the language of the institution: under current affairs the ministers touched upon Georgia, expressed grave concern over democratic backsliding, the situation of opposition parties and the implementation of the foreign agents legislation, and expect a more in-depth discussion at the January 2027 council.
Democratic backsliding is worsening, more and more opposition parties face the prospect of being banned and the foreign agents law is suffocating civil society, she said.
The pressure half of her sentence has a record behind it. On 8 October the European Parliament called, by 445 votes to 37 in a non-binding resolution, for targeted sanctions and visa bans on Bidzina Ivanishvili, Irakli Kobakhidze, Shalva Papuashvili and Kakha Kaladze and condemned the attempt to ban the opposition, and the day before Marta Kos told its foreign affairs committee the Commission could do only what the member states were ready for. Monday’s council issued its Russia decisions, 77 listings over the Duma elections in occupied Ukraine among them, and on Georgia it adopted nothing.
The governing party had answered before she spoke and again after. Tbilisi mayor Kakha Kaladze said at 13:44 that the party had no interest in why the ministers were gathering or what they discussed, because their statements rest on injustice and lies, and that Kallas could not find Georgia on a map. Prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze used his briefing to tell the EU ambassador, Pawel Herczynski, that a side that has lost an election does not sing ole, ole, his comment on an event the EU delegation held in Kakheti, Interpressnews reported, the election being the parliamentary vote of October 2024, whose result the opposition disputes.
After the press conference the majority leader, Irakli Kirtskhalia, called her remarks one-sided and brazen and said Brussels refuses the discussion the party has sought for years. The tone to Moscow the same day was the reverse. Parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili took Russia’s suspension of imports from six Georgian drinks producers, CAW’s item of Monday, as a matter for the agriculture ministry to clarify with the Russian side: it concerns several companies and not wine in general, he said, and he said he was surprised.
The party-ban case will still be pending in January. The Constitutional Court has had the government’s suit to ban the main opposition parties since 24 September, with nine months to decide, to 24 June 2027 by the law’s count, and on Monday the opposition’s Giorgi Sioridze spoke of a request by judge Manana Kobakhidze to recuse herself from it, a single-source report on Interpressnews. When the ministers next look at Georgia, the court will still be sitting on the case.
What January can change is the policy itself. Kallas’s sentence says the present one falls short on both of its aims, and the Council’s text promises depth with no decision attached. Between the two sit the sanctions the Parliament asked for and the member states have not agreed, and a court case that will still be open when the ministers sit down again.